 | Seven stories, with basement and attic |  |
SEVENTH STORY:
EMILE ROQUE.
1. I.
IT may be very bad taste in me, but I must confess
to a strong love for many of those old French
painters who flourished during the last century, and at
whom it is now quite the fashion to sneer. I do not allude
to the Poussins, of whom the best was more Roman
than Frenchman, and whose most striking pictures
seem to me to wear no nationality of sentiment; there
is nothing lively and mercurial in them; hardly anything
that is cheerful. But what a gayety there is in
the Vanloos—all of them! What a lively prettiness in
the little girl-faces of Greuze! What a charming coquetry
in the sheep and shepherdesses of Watteau!
To be sure the critics tell us that his country swains
and nymphs are far more arch and charming than any
browse, and listen and look on, more coquettishly than
live goats ever did; but what do I care for that?
Are they not well drawn? Are they not sweetly
colored? Do not the trees seem to murmur summer
strains? Does not the gorgeousness of the very atmosphere
invite the charming languor you see in his
groups? Is it not like spending a day of summer
stretched on the grass at St. Cloud—gazing idly on
Paris and the plain—to look on one of the painted pastorals
of Watteau?
Are not his pictures French from corner to corner—
beguilingly French—French to the very rosette that sets
off the slipper of his shepherdess? If there are no
such shepherdesses in nature, pray tell me, do you not
wish there were—throngs of them, lying on the hillsides
all about you—just as charming and as mischievous?
Watteau's brooks show no mud: why should the
feet of his fountain nymphs be made for anything but
dancing? Watteau's sheep are the best-behaved sheep
in the world; then why should his country swains look
red in the face, or weary with their watches? Why
should they do anything but sound a flageolet, or coquet
with pretty shepherdesses who wear blue sashes, and
rosettes in their shoes? In short, there is a marvellous
keeping about Watteau's pictures,—whatever the critics
fictions, which, like all good fictions, woo you into a
wish “it were true.”
But I did not set out to write critiques upon paintings;
nobody reads them through when they are written.
I have a story to tell. Poor Emile!—but I must begin
at the beginning.
Liking Watteau as I do, and loving to look for ten
minutes together into the sweet girl-face of Greuze's
“Broken Jug,” I used to loiter when I was in Paris for
hours together in those rooms of the Louvre where the
more recent French paintings are distributed, and where
the sunlight streams in warmly through the south windows,
even in winter. Going there upon passeport days,
I came to know, after a while, the faces of all the artists
who busy themselves with copying those rollicking French
masters of whom I have spoken. Nor could I fail to
remark that the artists who chose those sunny rooms for
their easels, and those sunny masters for their subjects,
were far more cheerful and gay in aspect than the
pinched and sour-looking people in the Long Gallery,
who grubbed away at their Da Vincis, and their Sasso
Ferratos.
Among those who wore the joyous faces, and who
courted the sunny atmosphere which hangs about Boucher
and Watteau, I had frequent occasion to remark a
tall, athletic young fellow, scarce four-and-twenty, who
shepherdesses and the well-behaved goats about which
I was just now speaking.
I do not think he was a great artist; I feel quite
sure that he never imagined it himself; but he came to
his work, and prepared his easel—rubbing his hands
together the while—with a glee that made me sure he
had fallen altogether into the spirit of that sunny nymph-world
which Watteau has created.
I have said that I thought him no great artist; nor
was he; yet there was something quite remarkable in
his copies. He did not finish well; his coloring bore
no approach to the noontide mellowness of the originals;
his figures were frequently out of drawing; but he never
failed to catch the expression of the faces, and to intensify
(if I may use the term) the joviality that belonged
to them. He turned the courtly levity of Watteau into
a kind of mad mirth. You could have sworn to the
identity of the characters; but on the canvas of the
copyist they had grown riotous.
What drew my attention the more was—what seemed
to me the artist's thorough and joyful participation
in the riot he made. After a rapid half-dozen of touches
with his brush, he would withdraw a step or two from
his easel, and gaze at his work with a hearty satisfaction
that was most cheering, even to a looker-on. His
glance seemed to say—“There I have you, little
of Watteau, and put you on my own ground, where you
may frisk as much as you please.” And he would beat
the measure of a light polka on his pallet.
I ought to say that this artist was a fine-looking
fellow withal, and his handsome face, aglow with enthusiasm,
drew away the attention of not a few lady
visitors from the pretty Vanloos scattered around. I do
not think he was ever disturbed by this; I do not think
that he tweaked his mustache, or gave himself airs in
consequence. Yet he saw it all; he saw everything
and everybody; his face wore the same open, easy,
companionable look which belongs to the frolicking
swains of Watteau. His freedom of manner invited
conversation; and on some of my frequent visits to the
French gallery I was in the habit of passing a word or
two with him myself.
“You seem,” said I to him one day, “to admire
Watteau very much?”
“Oui, Monsieur, vous avez raison: j'aime les choses
riantes, moi.”
“We have the same liking,” said I.
“Ah, vous aussi: je vous en félicite, Monsieur.
Tenez,”—drawing me forward with the most naive
manner in the world to look at a group he had just
completed—“Regardez! n'est ce pas, que ces petites
dames là rient aux anges?”
I chanced to have in that time an artist friend in
Paris—De Courcy, a Provincial by birth, but one who
had spent half his life in the capital, and who knew by
name nearly every copyist who made his appearance at
either of the great galleries. He was himself busy just
then at the Luxembourg; but I took him one day with
me through the Luvre, and begged him to tell me who
was the artist so enraptured with Watteau?
As I had conjectured, he knew, or professed to
know, all about him. He sneered at his painting—as a
matter of course: his manner was very sketchy; his
trees stiff; no action in his figures; but, after all, tolerably
well—passablement bien—for an amateur.
He was a native of the South of France; his name
—Emile Roque; he was possessed of an easy fortune,
and was about to marry, rumor said, the daughter of a
government officer of some distinction in the Department
of Finance.
Was there any reason why my pleasant friend of the
sunny pictures should not be happy? Rumor gave to
his promised bride a handsome dot. Watteau was always
open to his pencil and his humor. Bad as his
copies might be, he enjoyed them excessively. He had
youth and health on his side; and might, for aught
that appeared, extend his series of laughing nymphs
and coquettish shepherdesses to the end of his life.
The thought of him, or of the cheery years which
journeying shortly after, through the passes of the Alps.
It comes to me now, as I sit by my crackling fireside in
New England, with the wind howling through the pine-tree
at the corner, and the snow lying high upon the
ground.
2. II.
I HAD left Paris in the month of May; I came
back toward the end of August. The last is a
dull month for the capital; Parisians have not yet returned
from Baden, or the Pyrenees, or Dieppe. True,
the Boulevard is always gay; but it has its seasons of
exceeding gayety, and latter summer is by no means one
of them. The shopmen complain of the dulness, and
lounge idly at their doors; their only customers are
passing strangers. Pretty suites of rooms are to be had
at half the rates of autumn, or of opening spring. The
bachelor can indulge without extravagance in apartments
looking upon the Madeleine. The troops of children
whom you saw in the spring-time under the lee of
the terrace wall in the “little Provence” of the Tuileries
are all gone to St. Germain, or to Trouville. You
see no more the tall caps of the Norman nurses, or the
tight little figures of the Breton bonnes.
It is the season of vacation at the schools; and if
the streets have a deserted air; and the garden of the
Luxembourg is filled only with invalids and strolling
soldiers. The artists even, have mostly stolen away
from their easels in the galleries, and are studying the
live fish women of Boulogne or the bare-ankled shepherdesses
of Auvergne.
I soon found my way to all the old haunts of the
capital. I found it easy to revive my taste for the
coffee of the Rotonde, in the Palais Royal; and easy to
listen and laugh at Sainville and Grassot. I went, a
few days after my return, to the always charming salons
of the Louvre. The sun was hot at this season
upon that wing of the palace where hang the pictures
of Watteau; and the galleries were nearly deserted.
In the salon where I had seen so often the beaming admirer
of nymphs and shepherdesses, there was now only
a sharp-faced English woman, with bright erysipelas on
nose and cheeks, working hard at a Diana of Vanloo.
I strolled on carelessly to the cool corner room,
serving as antechamber to the principal gallery, and
which every visitor will remember for its great picture
of the battle of Eylau. There are several paintings
about the walls of this salon, which are in constant request
by the copyists; I need hardly mention that
favorite picture of Gerard, L'Amour et Psyché. There
was a group about it now; and in the neighborhood of
of the Watteau nymphs. But a sad change had
come over him since I saw him last. The gay humor
that shone in his face on my spring visits to the gallery
was gone. The openness of look which seemed to challenge
regard, if not conversation, he had lost utterly.
I was not surprised that he had deserted the smiling
shepherdesses of Watteau.
There was a settled and determined gloom upon his
face, which I was sure no painted sunshine could enliven.
He was not busy with the enamelled prettiness
of Gerard; far from it. His easel was beside him, but
his eye was directed toward that fearful melo-dramatic
painting—La Méduse of Géricault. It is a horrible
shipwreck story: a raft is floating upon an ocean waste;
dead bodies that may have been copied from the dissecting-halls,
lie on it; a few survivors, emaciated, and
with rigid limbs, cluster around the frail spar that
serves as mast, and that sways with the weight of a
tattered sail; one athletic figure rises above this dismal
group, and with emaciated arm held to its highest
reach, lifts a fluttering rag; his bloodshot eye, lighted
with a last hope, strains over the waste of waters
which seethe beyond him.
It was a picture from which I had always turned
away with a shudder. It may have truth and force;
but the truth is gross, and the force brutal. Yet upon
intensity. He had sketched only the principal figure of
the dying group—the athlete who beckons madly, whose
hope is on the waste. He had copied only a fragment
of the raft—barely enough to give foothold to the
figure; he had not even painted the sea, but had filled
his little canvas with a cold white monotone of color,
like a sleeted waste in winter.
I have already remarked the wonderful vitality
which he gave to mirth in his frolicsome pastorals; the
same power was apparent here; and he had intensified
the despair of the wretched castaway, shaking out
his last rag of hope,—to a degree that was painful to
look upon.
I went near him; but he wore no longer the old
tokens of ready fellowship. He plainly had no wish to
recognize, or be recognized. He was intent only upon
wreaking some bitter thought, or some blasted hope in
the face of that shipwrecked man. The despairing look,
and the bloodshot eye, which he had given to his copy
of the castaway, haunted me for days. It made that
kind of startling impression upon my mind which I was
sure could never be forgotten. I never think, even now,
of that painting in the Louvre, with the cold north light
gleaming on it, but the ghastly expression of the shipwrecked
man—as Emile Roque had rendered it in his
copy—starts to my mind like a phantom. I see the rag
pallid, pinched flesh; I see the starting eyes, bearing
resemblance,—as it seemed to me afterward, and seems
to me now,—to those of the distracted artist.
There was a cloud over the man; I felt sure of
that; I feared what might be the end of it. My eye
ran over the daily journals, seeking in the list of suicides
for the name of Emile Roque. I thought it
would come to that. On every new visit to the Louvre
I expected to find him gone. But he was there, assiduous
as ever; refining still upon the horrors of Géricault.
My acquaintance of the Luxembourg, De Courcy,
who had given me all the information I possessed about
the history and prospects of this artist, was out of the
city; he would not return until late in the autumn. I
dropped a line into the Poste Restante to meet him on
his return, as I was myself very shortly on the wing for
Italy. I can recall perfectly the expressions in my letter.
After intrusting him with one or two unimportant
commissions, I said: “By-the-by, you remember the
jolly-looking Emile Roque, who made such a frenzy
out of his love for Watteau and his shepherdesses, and
who was to come into possession of a pretty wife and a
pretty dot?
“Is the dot forthcoming? Before you answer, go
and look at him again—in the Louvre still; but he has
deserted Watteau; he is studying and copying the horrors
a honeymoon. If he were not an amateur, I should
charge you to buy for me that terrible figure he is
working up from the raft scene. The intensity he is
putting in it is not Géricault's—my word for it, it is
his own.
“When he is booked among the suicides (where
your Parisian forms of madness seem to tend), send
me the journal, and tell me what you can of the why.”
In the galleries of Florence one forgets the French
painters utterly, and rejoices in the forgetfulness.
Among the Carraccis and the Guidos what room is there
for the lover-like Watteau? Even Greuze, on the walls
of the Pitti Palace, would be Greuze no longer. It is
a picture-life one leads in those old cities of art, growing
day by day into companionship with the masters
and the masters' subjects.
How one hob-nobs with the weird sisters of Michael
Angelo! How he pants through Snyder's Boar-Hunt,
or lapses into a poetic sympathy with the marble flock
of Niobe!
Who wants letters of introduction to the “nice
people” of Florence, when he can chat with the Fornarina
by the hour, and listen to Raphael's Pope Julius?
Yesterday—I used to say to myself—I spent an
hour or two with old Gerard Douw and pretty Angelica
Kauffman—nice people, both of them. To-morrow I
of Carlo Dolci's. In such company one grows into a
delightful “Middle-Age” feeling, in which the vanities
of daily journals and hotel bills are forgotten.
In this mood of mind, when I was hesitating, one
day of mid-winter, whether I would sun myself in a
Claude Lorraine, or between the Arno and the houses,
the valet of the inn where I was staying, put a letter in
my hand bearing a Paris post-mark.
“It must be from De Courcy,” said I; and my
fancy straightway conjured up an image of the dapper
little man disporting among all the gayeties and the
grisettes of a Paris world; but I had never one thought
of poor Emile Roque, until I caught sight of his name
within the letter.
After acquitting himself of the sundry commissions
left in his keeping, De Courcy says:—
“You were half right and half wrong about the
jolly artist of Watteau. His suicide is not in the journals,
but for all that it may be. I had no chance of
seeing him at his new game in the corner salon, for the
bird had flown before my return. I heard, though, very
much of his strange copy of the crowning horror of
Géricault. Nor would you have been the only one in
the market as purchaser of his extravaganza. A droll
story is told of an English visitor who was startled one
day by, I dare say, the same qualities which you discovered
scruples, addressed himself, in the best way he could, to
the artist himself, requesting him to set a price upon his
work.
“The old Emile Roque whom I had known—in
fact, whom we had known together—would have met
such a question with the gayest and most gallant refusal
possible.
“But what did this bewitched admirer of Géricault
do?
“He kept at his work—doggedly, gloomily.
“The Englishman stubbornly renewed his inquiry—
this time placing his hand upon the canvas, to aid his
solicitation by so much of pantomime.
“The painter (you remember his stalwart figure)
brushed the stranger's hand aside, and with a petrifying
look and great energy of expression (as if the poor
Briton had been laying his hand on his very heart),
said: `C'est à moi, Monsieur—à moi—à moi!'—beating
his hand on his breast the while.
“Poor Emile! The jovial times of Watteau's
nymphs are, I fear, gone forever.
“But I forget to tell you what I chiefly had in mind
when I began this mention of him. Some say his love
has crazed him—some say no. The truth is, he is not
to marry the pretty Virginie C—, one time his
affianced.
“There are objections. Rumor says they come
from Monsieur C—, sous chef in the office of Finance,
and father of Virginie; and rumor adds that the objections
are insurmountable. What they are, Heaven only
knows. Surely a daintier fellow never sued for favor;
and as for scandal, Emile Roque was what you call, I
believe, a Puritan.” [I do not think it necessary to
correct De Courcy's strange use of an English term.]
“The oddest thing of all I have yet to tell you.
This broken hope diverted Emile from Watteau to the
corner salon of the Louvre; at least I infer as much,
since the two events agree in time. It is evident, furthermore,
that the poor fellow takes the matter bitterly
to heart; and it is perfectly certain that all the objection
rests with the father of the fiancée.
“So far, nothing strange; but notwithstanding this
opposition on the part of Monsieur C—, it is known
that Emile was in constant and familiar, nay, friendly
communication with him up to the time of his disappearance
from the capital, which occurred about the
date of my return.
“Read me this riddle if you can! Is the rendering
of the horrors of Géricault to restore Emile to favor?
Or shall I, as you prophesied four months ago (ample
time for such consummation), still look for his enrollment
among the suicides?”
With this letter in my hand (there were others in
Claude, and sunned myself instead along the Arno.
Beyond the houses which hang on the further bank of
the river, I could see the windows of the Pitti Palace
and the cypresses of the Boboli gardens, and above both,
the blue sky which arched over the tower of Galileo
upon the distant hills. I wished the distracted painter
might have been there on the sunny side of the houses,
which were full of memories of Angelo and Cellini, to
forget his troubles. If an unwilling father were all,
there might be no suicide. Still, the expression in his
copy of the castaway haunted me.
3. III.
WHY should I go on to speak of pictures here—
except that I love them? Why should I recall
the disgusting and wonderful old men and women
of Denner, which hang with glass over them, within
the window bays of the palace of Belvidere at Vienna?
Why should my fancy go stalking through that great
Rubens Museum, with its red arms, fat bosoms, pincushion
cheeks, and golden hair?
Why does my thought whisk away to that gorgeous
salon of Dresden, where hangs the greatest of all Raphael's
Madonnas?
The face of the Virgin is all that makes perfection
in female beauty; it is modest, it is tender, it is intelligent.
The eyes are living eyes, but with no touch of
earthiness, save the shade of care which earth's sorrows
give even to the Holy Virgin. She wears the dignity
of the mother of Christ, with nothing of severity to repulse;
she wears the youthful innocence of the spouse
of David, with no touch of levity; she wears the modest
bearing of one whose child was nursed in a manger,
with the presence of one “chosen from among women.”
She is mounting on clouds to heaven; light as an angel,
but with no wings; her divinity sustains her. In her
arms she holds lightly but firmly the infant Jesus, who
has the face of a true child, with something else beyond
humanity; his eye has a little of the look of a frighted
boy in some strange situation, where he knows he is
safe, and where yet he trembles. His light, silky hair
is strewn by a wind (you feel it like a balm) over a
brow beaming with soul; he looks deserving the adoration
the shepherds gave him; and there is that—in his
manner, innocent as the babe he was—in his look,
Divine as the God he was, which makes one see in the
child
—“the father of the man.”
Pope Sixtus is lifting his venerable face in adoration
from below; and opposite, Saint Barbara, beautiful and
modest, has dropped her eyes, though religious awe and
their heads and their little wings only above the edge
of the picture, are two cherubs, who are only less in
beauty than the Christ; they are twins—but they are
twin angels—and Christ is God.
The radiance in their faces is, I think, the most
wonderful thing I have ever seen in painting. They are
listening to the celestial harmony which attends the
triumph of the Virgin. These six faces make up the
picture; the Jesus, a type of divinity itself; the Virgin,
the purity of earth, as at the beginning,—yet humble,
because of earth; the cherubs, the purity of heaven, conscious
of its high estate; the two saints, earth made
pure and sanctified by Christ—half doubting, yet full
of hope.
I wrote thus much in my note-book, as I stood before
the picture in that room of the Royal Gallery which
looks down upon the market-place of Dresden; and with
the painting lingering in my thought more holily than
sermons of a Sunday noontime, I strolled over the market-place,
crossed the long bridge which spans the Elbe,
and wandered up the banks of the river as far as the
Findlater Gardens. The terrace is dotted over with
tables and benches, where one may sit over his coffee
or ice, and enjoy a magnificent view of Dresden, the
river, the bridge, and the green battle-field where Moreau
fell. It was a mild day of winter, and I sat there
my eye from time to time over an old number of the
Débats newspaper, which the waiter had placed upon
my table.
When there is no political news of importance stirring,
I was always in the habit of running over the
column of Faits Divers: “Different Things” translates
it, but does not give a good idea of the piquancy which
usually belongs to that column. The suicides are all
there; the extraordinary robberies are there; important
discoveries are entered; and all the bits of scandal,
which, of course, everybody reads and everybody says
should never have been published.
In the journal under my hand there was mention of
two murders,—one of them of that stereotype class growing
out of a drunken brawl, which the world seems to
regard indifferently, as furnishing the needed punctuation-marks
in the history of civilization. The other
drew my attention very closely.
The Count de Roquefort, an elderly gentleman of
wealth and distinguished family, residing in a chateau a
little off the high road leading from Nismes to Avignon,
in the South of France, had been brutally murdered in
his own house. The Count was unmarried; none of
his family connection resided with him, and aside from
a considerable retinue of servants, he lived quite alone—
devoted, as was said, to scientific pursuits.
It appeared that two days before his assassination
he was visited by a young man, a stranger in that region,
who was received (the servants testified) kindly
by the Count, and who passed two hours closeted with
him in his library. On the day of the murder the same
young man was announced; his manner was excited,
and he was ushered, by the Count's order, into the
library, as before.
It would seem, however, that the Count had anticipated
the possibility of some trouble, since he had
secured the presence of two “officers of the peace” in
his room. It was evident that the visitor had come by
appointment. The officers were concealed under the
hangings of a bay-window at the end of the library,
with orders from the Count not to act, unless they should
see signs of violence.
The young man, on entering, advanced toward the
table beside which the Count was seated, reading. He
raised his head at the visitor's entrance, and beckoned
to a chair.
The stranger approached more nearly, and without
seating himself, addressed the Count in a firm tone of
voice to this effect:
“I have come to ask, Monsieur le Comte, if you are
prepared to accept the propositions I made to you two
days ago?”
The Count seemed to hesitate for a moment; but
hall below.
The visitor appeared excited by his calmness, and
added, “I remind you, for the last time, of the vow I
have sworn to accomplish if you refuse my demand.”
“I do refuse,” said the Count, firmly. “It is a
rash —”
It was the last word upon his lips; for before the
officers could interfere, the visitor had drawn a pistol
from his breast and discharged it at the head of the
Count. The ball entered the brain. The Count lingered
for two hours after, but showed no signs of consciousness.
The assassin, who was promptly arrested, is a stalwart
man of about thirty, and from the contents of his
portmanteau, which he had left at the inn of an adjoining
village, it is presumed that he followed the profession
of an artist.
The cause of the murder is still a mystery; the
Count had communicated nothing to throw light upon it.
He was a kind master, and was not known to have an
enemy in the world.
I had read this account with that eager curiosity
with which I believe all—even the most sensitive and
delicate—unwittingly devour narratives of that kind; I
had finished my half-cup of coffee, and was conjecturing
what could possibly be the motive for such a murder,
strange visitor, when suddenly—like a flash—the conviction
fastened itself upon me, that the murderer was
none other than Emile Roque!
I did not even think in that moment of the remote
similarity in the two names—Roque and De Roquefort.
For anything suggestive that lay in it, the name might
as well have been De Montfort or De Courcy; I am
quite sure of that.
Indeed, no association of ideas, no deduction from
the facts named, led me to the conclusion which I formed
on the spur of the moment. Yet my conviction was as
strong as my own consciousness. I knew Emile Roque
was the murderer; I remembered it; for I remembered
his copy of the head of the castaway in Géricault's
Wreck of the Medusa!
When I had hazarded the conjecture of suicide, I
had reasoned loosely from the changed appearance of
the man, and from the suicidal tendency of the Paris
form of madness. Now I reasoned, not from the appearance
of the man at all, but from my recollection of
his painting.
There is no resignation in the face of Géricault's
shipwrecked man; there is only animal fear and despair,
lighted with but one small ray of hope. The ties
of humanity exist no longer for him; whatever was
near or dear is forgotten in that supreme moment when
and vitalizes every faculty.
Such is Géricault's picture; but Roque had added
the intensity of moral despair: he had foreshadowed
the tempest of a soul tossed on a waste—not of ocean—
but of doubt, hate, crime! I felt sure that he had unwittingly
foretokened his own destiny.
Are there not moments in the lives of all of us—
supreme moments—when we have the power lent us to
wreak in language, or on canvas, or in some wild burst
of music (as our habit of expression may lie), all our
capabilities, and to typify, by one effort of the soul, all
the issues of our life? I knew now that Emile Roque
had unwittingly done this in his head from the Medusa.
I knew that the period was to occur in his life when his
own thought and action would illustrate to the full all
the wildness and the despair to which he had already
given pictured expression. I cannot tell how I knew
this, any more than I can tell how I knew that he was
the murderer.
I wrote De Courcy that very day, referring him to
the paragraph I had read, and adding: “this artist is
Emile Roque, but who is the Count de Roquefort?”
It occasioned me no surprise to hear from him only two
days after (his letter having crossed mine on the way),
that the fact of Roque's identity with the culprit was
fully confirmed. And De Courcy added: “It is not a
Who could believe it of the man we saw rioting among
the nymphs of Watteau?”
4. IV.
I RETURNED to Paris by the way of Belgium.
I think it was in the Hôtel de Saxe, of Brussels,
where I first happened upon a budget of French papers
which contained a report of the trial of poor Roque.
It was a hopeless case with him; every one foresaw
that. For a time I do not think there was any sympathy
felt for him. The testimony all went to show the
harmless and benevolent character of the murdered
Count. The culprit had appeared to all who saw him
within the year past, of a morose and harsh disposition.
I say that for a time sympathy was with the murdered
man; but certain circumstances came to light toward
the close of the trial, and indeed after it was over,
and the poor fellow's fate was fixed, which gave a new
turn to popular feeling.
These circumstances had a special interest for me,
inasmuch as they cleared up the mystery which had belonged
to his change of manner in the galleries of the
Louvre, and to his relations with the Count de Roquefort.
I will try and state these circumstances as they
of that date.
In the first place, the Count, after the visit of
Emile Roque, had communicated to those in his confidence
nothing respecting the nature or the objects of
that visit; and this, notwithstanding he had such reason
to apprehend violence on its repetition, that he had secured
the presence of two officers to arrest the offensive
person. To these officers he had simply communicated
the fact of his expecting a visit from an unknown individual,
who had threatened him with personal violence.
The officers were quite sure that the Count had
spoken of the criminal as a stranger to him; indeed, he
seemed eager to convey to them the idea that he had no
previous knowledge whatever of the individual who so
causelessly threatened his peace.
Nothing was found among the Count's papers to forbid
the truthfulness of his assertion on this point; no
letter could be discovered from any person bearing that
name.
The mother of the prisoner, upon learning the accusation
urged against him, had become incapacitated
by a severe paralytic attack, from appearing as a witness,
or from giving any intelligible information whatever.
She had said only, in the paroxysm of her distress,
and before her faculties were withered by the
shock:—“Lui aussi! Il s'y perd!”
Not one of the companions of Emile Roque (and he
had many in his jovial days) had ever heard him speak
of the Count de Roquefort. Up to the time of his departure
for the South, he had communicated to no one his
intentions, or even his destination. His old friends had,
indeed, remarked the late change in his manner, and
had attributed it solely to what they supposed a bitter
disappointment in relation to his proposed marriage
with Virginie C—.
I have already alluded (through a letter from De
Courcy) to the singular fact, that Emile Roque continued
his familiarity and intimacy with Monsieur C— long
after the date of the change in his appearance, and even
up to the time of his departure for the South. It was
naturally supposed that Monsieur C— would prove
an important witness in the case. His testimony, however,
so far from throwing light upon the crime, only
doubled the mystery attaching to the prisoner's fate.
He spoke in the highest terms of the character which
the criminal had always sustained. He confirmed the
rumors which had coupled his name with that of a
member of his own family. The marriage between the
parties had been determined upon with his full consent,
and only waited the final legal forms usual in such cases
for its accomplishment, when it was deferred in obedience
to the wishes of only M. Roque himself!
The witness regarded this as a caprice at the first;
from that time, had satisfied him that some secret anxiety
was weighing on his mind. His high regard for the
character of M. Roque prompted (and that alone
had prompted) a continuance of intimacy with him, and
a vain repetition of endeavors to win from him some explanation
of his changed manner.
One fact more, which seemed to have special significance
in its bearing upon the crime, was this;—in the
pocket of the prisoner at the time of his seizure was found
a letter purporting to be from the murdered Count, and
addressed to a certain Amedée Brune. It was a tender
letter, full of expressions of devotion, and promising that
upon a day not very far distant, the writer would meet
his fair one, and they should be joined together, for woe
or for weal, thenceforth, through life.
The letter was of an old date—thirty odd years ago
it had been written; and on comparison with the manuscript
of the Count of that date, gave evidence of anthenticity.
Who this Amedée Brune might be, or what
relation she bore to the criminal, or how the letter came
into his possession, none could tell. Those who had been
early acquaintances of the Count had never so much as
heard a mention of that name. A few went so far as to
doubt the genuineness of his signature. He had been a
man remarkable for his quiet and studious habits. So
far as the knowledge of his friends extended, no passing
gallantries had ever relieved the monotony of his life.
The accused, in the progress of the inquiries which
had elicited these facts, had maintained a dogged silence,
not communicating any statement of importance even to
his legal advisers. The sudden illness which had befallen
his mother, and which threatened a fatal termination,
seemed to have done more to prostrate his hope
and courage than the weight of the criminal accusation.
The fiancée, meantine, Mademoiselle C—, was,
it seems, least of all interested in the fate of the prisoner.
Whether incensed by his change of manner, or stung by
jealousy, it was certain that before this accusation had
been urged she had conceived against him a strong antipathy.
Such was the state of facts developed on the trial.
The jury found him guilty of murder; there were no extenuating
circumstances, and there was no recommendation
to mercy.
After the condemnation the criminal had grown more
communicative. Something of the reckless gayety of
his old days had returned for a time. He amused himself
with sketching from memory some of the heads of
Watteau's nymphs upon his prison walls. His mother
had died, fortunately, only a few days after the rendering
of the verdict, without knowing, however, what fate
was to befal her son.
It was rumored that when this event was made
for the priest, made a full confession of his crime
and its causes. This confession had occasioned that turn
in popular sympathy of which I have spoken. The
friends of the Count, however, and even the prisoner's
own legal advisers (as I was told), regarded it as only an
ingenious appeal for mercy.
For myself, notwithstanding the lack of positive evidence
to sustain his statements, I have been always inclined
to believe his story a true one.
The main points in his confession were these: He
had loved Virginie C—, as she had not deserved to be
loved. He was happy; he had fortune, health, everything
to insure content. Monsieur C— welcomed
him to his family. His mother rejoiced in the cheerfulness
and sunny prospects of her only child. His
father (he knew it only from his mother's lips) had been
a general in the wars of Napoleon, and had died before
his recollection.
He had been little concerned to inquire regarding the
character or standing of his father, until, as the marriage
day approached, it became necessary to secure legal testimonials
respecting his patrimony and name.
No general by the name of Roque had ever served in
the wars of Napoleon or in the armies of France! For
the first time the laughing dream of his life was disturbed.
With his heart full, and his brain on fire, he appealed to
Amidst tears and sobs, the truth was wrung from her,
that he—the gay-hearted Emile, whose life was full of
promise—could claim no legal parentage. But the man
who had so wronged both him and herself was still alive;
and, with the weakness of her sex, she assured him that
he was of noble birth, and had never shown tenderness
toward any woman save herself.
Who was this noble father, on whose riches the son
was living? No entreaties or threats could win this secret
from the mother.
Then it was that the change had come over the
character of Emile; then it was that he had deserted
the smiling nymphs of Watteau for the despairing castaway
of Géricault. Too proud to bring a tarnished escutcheon
to his marriage rites; doubting if that stain
would not cause both father and daughter to relent, he
had himself urged the postponement of the legal arrangements.
One slight hope—slighter than that belonging to
the castaway of the wrecked Médusa—sustained him.
The mother (she avowed it with tears and with grief)
had become such only under solemn promise of marriage
from one she had never doubted.
To find this recreant father was now the aim of the
crazed life of Emile. With this frail hope electrifying
his despair, he pushed his inquiries secretly in every quarter,
and solaced his thoughts with his impassioned work
in the corner salon of the Louvre.
In the chamber of his mother was a little escritoire,
kept always closed and locked. His suspicions, after a
time, attached themselves there. He broke the fastenings,
and found within a miniature, a lock of hair, a
packet of letters, signed—De Roquefort. Of these last
he kept only one; the others he destroyed as so many tokens
of his shame.
That fatal one he bore with him away from Paris,
out from the influence of his mother. He pushed his
inquiries with the insidious cunning of a man crazed by
a single thought. He found at length the real address
of the Count de Roquefort. He hurried to his presence,
bearing always with him the letter of promise, so
ruthlessly broken.
The Count was startled by his appearance, and
startled still more by the wildness of his story and of
his demands. The son asked the father to make good,
at this late day, the promise of his youth. The Count
replied evasively; he promised to assist the claimant
with money, and with his influence, and would engage
to make him heir to the larger part of his fortune.
All this fell coldly upon the ear of the excited Emile.
He wished restitution to his mother. Nothing less
could be listened to.
The Count urged the scandal which would grow out
of such a measure; with his years and reputation, he
could not think of exposing himself to the ribald tongues
necessarily belong to the marriage would, he considered,
be of serious injury to Emile himself. The fact of
his illegitimacy was unknown; the old relation of his
mother to himself was a secret one; the obstacles which
might now lie in the way of his own marriage to Virginie
C— were hardly worth consideration, when
compared with the inconvenience which would follow a
public exposure of the circumstances. He set before
Emile the immense advantages of the fortune which he
would secure to him on his (the Count's) death, provided
only he was content to forbear his urgence as regarded
his mother.
Emile listened coldly, calmly. There was but one
thought in his mind—only one hope; there must be
restitution to his mother, or he would take justice in his
own hands. The Count must make good his promise,
or the consequences would be fatal. He gave the Count
two days for reflection.
At the end of that time he returned, prepared for
any emergency. The Count had utterly refused him
justice: he had uttered his own death-warrant.
His mother was no longer living, to feel the sting of
the exposure. For himself, he had done all in his power
to make her name good: he had no ties to the world;
he was ready for the worst.
Such was the relation of Emile; and there was a
facts established by evidence, which gave it an air of
great probability.
But, on the other hand, it was alleged by the friends
of the Count that such a relation on his part never could
have existed; that not the slightest evidence of it could
be found among his papers, nor did the recollection of
his oldest friends offer the smallest confirmation. The
reported conversations of Emile with the Count were,
they contended, only an ingenious fiction.
Singularly enough, there was nothing among the
effects of the deceased Madame Roque to confirm the allegation
that she had ever borne the name of Amedée
Brune. She had been known only to her oldest acquaintances
of the capital as Madame Roque: of her
previous history nothing could be ascertained.
The solitary exclamation of that lady, “Il s'y perd!”
was instanced as proof that Emile was laboring under a
grievous delusion.
Notwithstanding this, my own impression was that
Emile had executed savage justice upon the betrayer
of his mother.
5. V.
ON the month of March—a very cold month in
that year—I had returned to Paris, and taken
up my old quarters in a hôtel garni of the Rue des
Beaux-Arts.
Any public interest or curiosity which had belonged
to the trial and story of Emile Roque had passed away.
French journalists do not keep alive an interest of that
sort by any reports upon the condition of the prisoner.
They barely announce the execution of his sentence upon
the succeeding day. I had, by accident only, heard of
his occasional occupation in sketching the heads of
some of Watteau's nymphs upon the walls of his cell.
I could scarce believe this of him. It seemed to me
that his fancy would run rather in the direction of the
horrors of Géricault.
I felt an irresistible desire to see him once again.
There was no hope of this, except I should be present
at his execution. I had never witnessed an execution;
had never cared to witness one. But I wished to look
once more on the face of Emile Roque.
The executions in Paris take place without public
announcement, and usually at daybreak, upon the
square fronting the great prison of La Roquette. No
order is issued until a late hour on the preceding evening,
guillotine brought at midnight to the prison square, and
a corps of soldiery is detailed for special service (unmentioned)
in that quarter of the city. My only chance
of witnessing the scene was in arranging with one of
the small wine-merchants, who keep open house in that
neighborhood until after midnight, to dispatch a messenger
to me whenever he should see preparations commenced.
This arrangement I effected; and on the 22d of
March I was roused from sleep at a little before one in
the morning by a bearded man, who had felt his way
up the long flight of stairs to my rooms, and informed
me that the guillotine had arrived before the prison of
Roquette.
My thought flashed on the instant to the figure of
Emile as I had seen him before the shepherdesses of
Watteau—as I had seen him before the picture of the
Shipwreck. I dressed hurriedly, and groped my way
below. The night was dark and excessively cold. A
little sleet had fallen, which crumpled under my feet as
I made my way toward the quay. Arrived there, not
a cab was to be found at the usual stand; so I pushed
on across the river, and under the archway of the palace
of the Louvre,—casting my eye toward that wing of
the great building where I had first seen the face which
I was shortly to look on for the last time on earth.
Finding no cabs in the square before the palace, I
went on through the dark streets of St. Anne and
Grammont, until I reached the Boulevard. A few voitures
de remise were opposite the Café Foy. I appealed
to the drivers of two of them in vain, and only succeeded
by a bribe in inducing a third to drive me to the
Place de la Roquette. It is a long way from the centre
of Paris, under the shadow almost of Père la Chaise. I
tried to keep some reckoning of the streets through
which we passed, but I could not. Sometimes my eye
fell upon what seemed a familiar corner, but in a moment
all was strange again. The lamps appeared to me
to burn dimly; the houses along the way grew
smaller and smaller. From time to time, I saw a wine-shop
still open; but not a soul was moving on the
streets with the exception of, here and there, a brace of
sergents de ville. At length we seemed to have passed
out of the range even of the city patrol, and I was beginning
to entertain very unpleasant suspicions of the
cabman, and of the quarter into which he might be taking
me at that dismal hour of the night, when he drew
up his horse before a little wine-shop, which I soon
recognized as the one where I had left my order for the
dispatch of the night's messenger.
I knew now that the guillotine was near.
As I alighted I could see, away to my right, the dim
outline of the prison looming against the night sky, with
it was sheeted over with sleet, and the leafless trees
that girdled it round stood ghost-like in the snow.
Through the branches, and not far from the prison gates,
I could see, in the gray light (for it was now hard upon
three o'clock), a knot of persons collected around a
frame-work of timber, which I knew must be the guillotine.
I made my way there, the frozen surface crumpling
under my steps. The workmen had just finished their
arrangements. Two of the city police were there, to
preserve order, and to prevent too near an approach of
the loiterers from the wine-shops—who may have been,
perhaps, at this hour, a dozen in number.
I could pass near enough to observe fully the construction
of the machine. There was, first, a broad
platform, perhaps fifteen feet square, supported by movable
tressle-work, and elevated some six or seven feet
from the ground. A flight of plank steps led up to this,
broad enough for three to walk upon abreast. Immediately
before the centre of these steps, upon the platform,
was stretched what seemed a trough of plank; and from
the farther end of this trough rose two strong uprights
of timber, perhaps ten feet in height. These were connected
at the top by a slight frame-work; and immediately
below this, by the light of a solitary street lamp
which flickered near by, I could see the glistening of the
willow basket: its shape explained to me its purpose.
At the end of the trough, and beyond the upright timbers,
was placed a tub: with a shudder, I recognized
its purpose also.
The prison gates were only a few rods distant from
the steps to the scaffold, and directly opposite them.
They were still closed and dark.
The execution, I learned, was to take place at six.
A few loiterers, mostly in blouses, came up from time
to time to join the group about the scaffold.
By four o'clock there was the sound of tramping
feet, one or two quick words of command, and presently
a battalion of the Municipal Guard, without drumbeat,
marched in at the lower extremity of the square,
approached the scaffold, and having stacked their arms,
loitered with the rest.
Lights now began to appear at the windows of the
prison. A new corps of police came up and cleared a
wider space around the guillotine. A cold gray light
stole slowly over the eastern sky.
By five o'clock the battalion of the Guards had formed
a hedge of bayonets from either side of the prison
doors, extending beyond and inclosing the scaffold. A
squadron of mounted men had also come upon the
ground, and was drawn up in line, a short distance on
one side. Two officials appeared now upon the scaffold,
or chain which held it to its place, and the knife fell
with a quick, sharp clang, that I thought must have
reached to ears within the walls of the prison. Twice
more they made their trial, and twice more I heard the
clang.
Meantime people were gathering. Market-women
bound for the city lingered at sight of the unusual spectacle,
and a hundred or more soldiers from a neighboring
barrack had now joined the crowd of lookers-on. A
few women from the near houses had brought their
children; and a half-dozen boys had climbed into the
trees for a better view.
At intervals, from the position which I held, I could
see the prison doors open for a moment, and the light
of a lantern within, as some officer passed in or out.
I remember that I stamped the ground petulantly—
it was so cold. Again and again I looked at my watch.
Fifteen minutes to six!
It was fairly daylight now, though the morning was
dark and cloudy, and a fine, searching mist was in the
air.
A man in blouse placed a bag of saw-dust at the
foot of the gallows. The crowd must have now numbered
a thousand. An old market-woman stood next
me. She saw me look at my watch, and asked the
hour.
“Eight minutes to six.”
“Mon Dieu; huit minutes encore!” She was eager
for the end.
I could have counted time now by the beating of my
heart.
What was Emile Roque doing within those doors?
praying? struggling? was the face of the castaway on
him? I could not separate him now from that fearful
picture; I was straining my vision to catch a glimpse—
not of Emile Roque—but of the living counterpart of
that terrible expression which he had wrought—wild,
aimless despair.
Two minutes of six.
I saw a hasty rush of men to the parapet that topped
the prison wall; they leaned there, looking over.
I saw a stir about the prison gates, and both were
flung wide open.
There was a suppressed murmur around me—“Le
voici! Le voici!” I saw him coming forward between
two officers; he wore no coat or waistcoat, and his shirt
was rolled back from his throat; his arms were pinioned
behind him; his bared neck was exposed to the
frosty March air; his face was pale—deathly pale, yet
it was calm; I recognized not the castaway, but the
man—Emile Roque.
There was a moment between the prison gates and
the foot of the scaffold; he kissed the crucifix, which a
know not how, but in an instant he seemed to fall, his
head toward the knife—under the knife.
My eyes fell. I heard the old woman beside me
say passionately, “Mon Dieu! il ne veut pas!”
I looked toward the scaffold; at that supreme moment
the brute instinct in him had rallied for a last
struggle. Pinioned as he was, he had lifted up his
brawny shoulders and withdrawn his neck from the fatal
opening. Now indeed, his face wore the terrible
expression of the picture. Hate, fear, madness, despair,
were blended in his look.
But the men mastered him; they thrust him down;
I could see him writhe vainly. My eyes fell again.
I heard a clang—a thud!
There was a movement in the throng around me.
When I looked next at the scaffold, a man in blouse
was sprinkling saw-dust here and there. Two others
were lifting the long willow basket into a covered cart.
I could see now that the guillotine was painted of a dull
red color, so that no blood stains would show.
I moved away with the throng, the sleet crumpling
under my feet.
I could eat nothing that day. I could not sleep on
the following night.
The bloodshot eyes and haggard look of the picture
real in the man, haunted me.
I never go now to the gallery of the Louvre but I
shun the painting of the wrecked Medusa as I would
shun a pestilence.
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